Are Humility and Arrogance Pretty Much the Same Thing?

A while back I was taking a class on something or other, and at one point we had to do some presentations about personal character traits. In my presentation I wanted to bring up two or three of them, and subsequently confront them with more or less their respective opposites. One of those traits was humility, and I wanted to confront it with its polar opposite, which I consider to be arrogance. And what I came to realize is that either humility and arrogance can indeed be pretty much the same thing, or alternatively it's just that extreme humility can at times become virtually indistinguishable from plain old arrogance... In order to illustrate this for the presentation I immediately thought of Jon Snow of all people, a fella known for being virtuous and humble, but perhaps to the point of a stubbornness that borders on arrogance or even momentary blindness, as he followed the moral example of his adoptive father who was likewise virtuous and humble, even unto death... Whether or not this reality of polar opposites is the case for all traits I have no bleeding clue. All I know is that long after the presentation was done I was still left with one or two things to say about this, so I figured I might as well write something down.

Still using Jon Snow as an example I might have to mix in a bit of the television show with the books themselves. Having read the entire book series, or what exists of it so far, and probably always will, I had a very specific quote in my mind, one in which a wise female character compares Jon Snow's humility to either arrogance or pride, whatever the difference between the two might be... But as I prepared that presentation I couldn't for the life of me find the darn quote... As it turns out I was looking in the wrong place. I was convinced that the quote was to be found in A Feast for Crows and that it belonged to Cersei Lannister. I don't know why I thought that, perhaps because there is in fact a chapter in which she has to deal with the new lord commander, and so she wonders about his demeanor. For whatever reason I focused on searching the quote in that volume alone, so much so that, being thereafter obviously unable to find it, I gave up and in the presentation I merely mentioned the quote in passing. But then a few weeks later, as I was laying in bed in one of those moments when we are wide awake but too lazy to get up, it suddenly came to me – the quote actually belonged to A Dance With Dragons, and it was attributed to Lady Melisandre.

It was Jon Snow she needed, not fried bread and bacon, but it was no use sending Devan to the lord commander. He would not come to her summons. Snow still chose to dwell behind the armory, in a pair of modest rooms previously occupied by the Watch’s late blacksmith. Perhaps he did not think himself worthy of the King’s Tower, or perhaps he did not care. That was his mistake, the false humility of youth that is itself a sort of pride. It was never wise for a ruler to eschew the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings.

I don't mean to turn this into an Ice and Fire analysis or whatever, I just think it's a good starting point. Because it really is the case that too much humility becomes, in and of itself, arrogance. It rather reminds me of that scene very early on in the show when Jamie Lannister teases Jon about joining the Night's Watch, calling it a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and Jon actually gets offended and brings up the ancient honor of the house. But wait, I thought he was supposed to be humble, and yet now he's out looking for honor and glory? Or is has he somehow found pride within humility?... At least it is true that supposedly humble people often feel ironically embarrassed about being mocked precisely for their humility. Isn't it the case that such mockery shouldn't affect you? Or is it that the mockery has an underlying trait of unpleasantness that you feel compelled to counter? I'm not so sure but it is rather interesting. I guess it has been said before that a thing is totally different, and yet very much the same, as its opposite. With humility and arrogance the same might could apply, to the point where being too humble does indeed make you arrogant. All it takes is an arrogant yet honest person to push the right buttons.

Or if not arrogant per se then it's sure to at least make you stubborn. If you have proven yourself worthy of something, as Jon as proven himself worthy of the King's Tower, then why not seize it? Melisandre recommends as much, arguing that symbols of power are, in and of themselves, sources of power. Badges, titles, uniforms, accommodations, and other such things, they all create a sense of power in other people, which is all that power is to begin with. So if you do act worthy of something, then people start acting accordingly, and practically speaking you thus become indeed worthy of that something. For instance, if you sing well, and people pay to hear you sing, then you are indeed a good singer. Thus it appears correct for you to forgo some humility and to simply state your singing prowess as a matter of public record, as an objective, or rather inter-subjective, fact. It does appear correct to feel that way, to feel confident in your skill, but then again to shed that humility either leads you in the path of arrogance, or of growing discontent from others, or even of delusion within yourself, but that's a discussion for another day.

As far as arrogance goes, when you prove your skills and people then respond positively to them, it may be in order for you to accept and admit your own skill, but too much of that leads you to fall in love with yourself, and to subsequently lose the underdog mentality that made your work special in the first place. As far as discontent goes, that would be by its very nature fickle, since people always respond well to a talented but humble person, but they don't particularly like it when that person takes too much pride in the quality of their own work. In many ways it is better to remain silent, or to not make such blunt statements either way. We all have our own perspectives about ourselves and about our own work, but in some measure it is useless to have such beliefs when they don't relate to the real world. It's useless to believe you are kind, generous, talented, beautiful and so on, when nobody acts like you are kind, generous, talented and beautiful. In some measure, such traits are inherently inter-subjective, I think. Believe whatever you'd like about yourself as long as it doesn't lead you down the path of delusion. Or can we even have rational third person perspectives about our subjective traits? Maybe we can, but I for one am often suspicious of human rationality, maybe even my own.

So where does that leave us? If you are invited to a wedding and you take the lowliest place, are you as arrogant as if you purposely take the loftiest one? At what point does bringing yourself down actually come across as disingenuous? I don't know, and I don't claim to have any answers, just a bunch of questions. As for me, or rather as for whatever I said in that presentation, I seem to remember something about optimism versus pessimism, as if to imply that being arrogant is akin to being overtly optimistic about yourself, just in the same way that being humble, or too humble, is akin to being overtly pessimistic about yourself. Too much of either one will kill you, as I will attempt to demonstrate in a future article because trust me, the pessimist in me is always eager for it. But does the pessimist in me also play humble as a way to downplay his own skills, or even to shield himself from potential criticism? I suppose at the end of the day it's always gonna be a matter of optics in the sense that to play arrogant about something in which I'm confident might get me slapped in the face in case I do mess up, as I eventually will because people always eventually do. So as a preventative measure it is easier to play humble and to come out on top. It's always better to surprise people positively, and it's always easier to do that when they have low expectations of you to begin with. Otherwise people expect too much of you all the time, so much so that when you do fail, you fail twice as hard.

So I guess I have two quick stories about this, both of which happened when I was in ninth grade, and both are related to english class. Told in a very brief way, especially because they aren't great stories, the first was to do with a test we were taking specifically on verbs. I was always good at english, I didn't feel I needed to study, and so I didn't... and I failed miserably. The other instance was a school-wide competition that my friends expected me to win... and so I failed it on purpose. It would then seem that the first instance is a case of optimistic arrogance, of the very real downfall of self-confidence, whereas the second is an instance of pessimistic humility in the sense that, in order to avoid letting my friends down even after trying my bestest best, I let them down on purpose without even trying. So while I was never proven worthy of the King's Tower, I did willingly refuse to even attempt it, exhibiting my own false humility of youth that truly was nothing more than a very frail and very tender sense of pride.

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